


Lack of

by Cumberbatch Critter (ivelostmyspectacles)



Series: DouWata 30 Day OTP Challenge [23]
Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sadness, bc Watanuki, xxxHolic Kei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 07:51:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4658607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelostmyspectacles/pseuds/Cumberbatch%20Critter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Watanuki wants, he'll never be able to have.</p><p>He just has to hang on to what he has in the meantime.</p><p>[xxxHolic Kei, episode compliant.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lack of

**Author's Note:**

> I just kinda wanted to run with that scene after Watanuki and Kohane bring that spirit to the temple, it took this tone and yeah.
> 
> I do not own _xxxHolic_. Thanks for reading!

Watanuki scrubbed the towel against his hair listlessly, the water clinging stubbornly there dripping down his neck, the chill digging deep into Watanuki's body. Doumeki had said morons could probably catch colds. He was probably right. Watanuki felt sick, and sluggish and cold to the core. Not that he agreed that he was a moron, or anything, but... he just felt sick.

And cold, and he couldn't stop shivering. He tried to ignore it, the way that his fingertips trembled or the intermittant spasms, bursts of cold making form, as they shook his body. Instead, he just tried to towel dry his hair until he gave up and let the towel fall down around his neck.

Doumeki padded back into the room, silent save for the sound of his bare feet against the floor. Watanuki didn't look away from the hole he was staring towards the shouji, at least, not until Doumeki set a steaming glass in front of him and told him to drink.

"... What is it?" Watanuki reached for it numbly, again ignoring his shaking fingers, without waiting for an answer. He didn't care, at this point, as long it was warm. He was so cold.

Doumeki spouted some explanation about how his grandfather would always use to make it and that it was good for colds, or the cold, Watanuki wasn't really listening. He curled his fingers around the cup and stared into the surface of the liquid, of his reflection and the room around him.

He asked Doumeki, eventually, what his parents called him. _Shizuka_ , he'd replied, and Watanuki agreed with the same, swooping sensation of his stomach that he was almost about to be sick. His parents had always called him Kimihiro, too. But Kohane-chan had said...

Doumeki stood up, leaving the room as silently as he had come in.

Watanuki didn't bother looking up, too lost in his own thoughts. If Kohane-chan's mother didn't call her Kohane-chan... was he the only person that called her by that name? He had known her for such a very short time and... he was the only person that called her by that name? It didn't make any _sense_.

Parents that didn't treat their children as though they loved them... Children who didn't appreciate their parents...

Watanuki would give anything, _anything_ -

He jumped when a blanket landed on his shoulders.

He glanced up, looking at the blanket and then Doumeki, who knelt down and wrapped the blanket more firmly around Watanuki's shoulders.

Watanuki had half a mind to ask him what he was doing, but he didn't feel like it, just then. He reached up to clutch at the blanket, staring at the floor. "... I don't get it."

Doumeki pulled the towel free from Watanuki's neck. "Get what?"

"... How can parents..." he trailed off. "How could she... not call her own daughter by her name?" He tightened his grip around the blanket.

Doumeki rest his hands on his knees, regarding him. "Some people don't understand."

Watanuki frowned, looking up at him.

"Devotion," Doumeki continued, clarifying.

"Oh."

"Some people don't know how to express it, too."

Watanuki let out a breath that he hadn't known he was holding. Probably had been holding since he'd offered his umbrella to Kohane-chan. He felt tired, and cold, and _starved_ for things he didn't have. "That's sad," he said softly.

"Yeah."

Watanuki curled slightly into himself, shoulders slumping. The warm drink Doumeki had given him had battered away the traces of his shivering, but it didn't help the hollow feeling inside his chest.

"You should stay here tonight."

Watanuki looked up at Doumeki again, wanting to frown, but not having enough mental fortitude to do emotions any further than he already was. "Why... would I...?" he asked slowly, coercing his tongue into vocalizing again.

"So you don't have to be alone." Doumeki said it matter-of-factly while still managing to make it sound like a question. It was almost an admission of unassurance, except... not, with Doumeki.

Watanuki closed his eyes. He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell Doumeki off, and argue that he didn't need it... but, God, he wanted it, just then. "... Okay," he breathed, and didn't open his eyes.

There was movement as Doumeki presumably stood again. "I'll lay out a futon across from my room."

"... Thanks, Doume- ... Shizuka."

It wouldn't happen often, but... sometimes. The appreciation proven through words. _Shizuka_.

Doumeki was quiet, and then his footfalls led away towards the hall. The shouji slid open. "... Kimihiro." The door slid closed, and the footsteps in the hallway quieted as they got further away.

Watanuki sat, frozen, wide-eyed, enveloped in silence. And... he was so unused to hearing his own name that it almost startled him. Hearing it from Doumeki's lips, hearing it from anybody's lips...

The room blurred as his eyes filled with tears.

He pressed his fingers against his lips to stifle the sob, and ducked his head under the blanket, pulling it closer; if he thought hard enough, he could pretend it was someone there with him, and if it smelled like Doumeki's shampoo and Doumeki's soap and Doumeki's cologne; he'd take it, he'd take it.

He dug his fingernails into the blanket, holding onto it for dear life.

 


End file.
